Re-Figuring Theology

Re-Figuring Theology PDF Author: Stephen H. Webb
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791405703
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Here is a rhetorical treatment of Karl Barth's early theology. Although scholars have long noted the rhetorical power of Barth's work, calling it volcanic and explosive, this book uses rhetoric to illuminate the peculiar nature of his prose. It displays a Barth whose prose is radically unstable and inseparable from his theological arguments. The author connects Barth's early theology to the Expressionism of the Weimar Republic. He develops an original theory of figures of speech, relying on the philosophies of Paul Ricoeur and Hayden White, to delve more deeply into the particular configurations of Barth's writings. Nietzsche's hyperbole and Kierkegaard's irony are examined as rhetorical precedents of Barth's style. The closing chapter surveys Barth's later, realistic theology and then suggests ways in which his earlier tropes, especially the figures of excess and self-negation, can serve to enable theology to speak today.

Re-Figuring Theology

Re-Figuring Theology PDF Author: Stephen H. Webb
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791405703
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
Here is a rhetorical treatment of Karl Barth's early theology. Although scholars have long noted the rhetorical power of Barth's work, calling it volcanic and explosive, this book uses rhetoric to illuminate the peculiar nature of his prose. It displays a Barth whose prose is radically unstable and inseparable from his theological arguments. The author connects Barth's early theology to the Expressionism of the Weimar Republic. He develops an original theory of figures of speech, relying on the philosophies of Paul Ricoeur and Hayden White, to delve more deeply into the particular configurations of Barth's writings. Nietzsche's hyperbole and Kierkegaard's irony are examined as rhetorical precedents of Barth's style. The closing chapter surveys Barth's later, realistic theology and then suggests ways in which his earlier tropes, especially the figures of excess and self-negation, can serve to enable theology to speak today.

Re-figuring the Ramayana as Theology

Re-figuring the Ramayana as Theology PDF Author: Ajay K. Rao
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134077424
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
The Rāmāyana of Vālmīki is considered by many contemporary Hindus to be a foundational religious text. But this understanding is in part the result of a transformation of the epic’s receptive history, a hermeneutic project which challenged one characterization of the genre of the text, as a work of literary culture, and replaced it with another, as a work of remembered tradition. This book examines Rāmāyana commentaries, poetic retellings, and praise-poems produced by intellectuals within the Śrīvaisnava order of South India from 1250 to 1600 and shows how these intellectuals reconceptualized Rāma’s story through the lens of their devotional metaphysics. Śrīvaisnavas applied innovative interpretive techniques to the Rāmāyana, including allegorical reading, ślesa reading (reading a verse as a double entendre), and the application of vernacular performance techniques such as word play, improvisation, repetition, and novel forms of citation. The book is of interest not only to Rāmāyana specialists but also to those engaged with Indian intellectual history, literary studies, and the history of religions.

Christian Hermeneutics

Christian Hermeneutics PDF Author: James Fodor
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Paul Ricoeur is one of the most influential philosophers alive today. This book draws primarily on his hermeneutic insights to address the fundamental question of how reference, truth, and meaning are related in the discourse of theology. Fodor defends the view that theological truth claims cannot be sustained without some appeal to the referential, or in Rocoeur's terminology "refigurative," potential intrinsic to our linguistic practices. By bringing the philosophical work of Ricoeur into mutually critical conversation with theology, particularly that of Hans Frei, the book underscores the importance of reference in assessing theological claims.

The Unique and Universal Christ

The Unique and Universal Christ PDF Author: Drew Collins
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781481315494
Category : Christianity and other religions
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Critiques Alan Race's models of Christianity and world religions and offers an alternative based on the theological typology of Hans Frei"--

Refiguring the Spiritual

Refiguring the Spiritual PDF Author: Mark C. Taylor
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231527772
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Mark C. Taylor provocatively claims that contemporary art has lost its way. With the art market now mirroring the art of finance, many artists create works solely for the purpose of luring investors and inspiring trade among hedge funds and private equity firms. When art is commodified, corporatized, and financialized, it loses its critical edge and is transformed into a financial instrument calculated to maximize profitable returns. Joseph Beuys, Matthew Barney, James Turrell, and Andy Goldsworthy are artists who differ in style, yet they all defy the trends that have diminished art's potential in recent decades. They understand that art is a transformative practice drawing inspiration directly and indirectly from ancient and modern, Eastern and Western forms of spirituality. For Beuys, anthroposophy, alchemy, and shamanism drive his multimedia presentations; for Barney and Goldsworthy, Celtic mythology informs their art; and for Turrell, Quakerism and Hopi myth and ritual shape his vision. Eluding traditional genres and classifications, these artists combine spiritually inspired styles and techniques with material reality, creating works that resist merging space into cyberspace in a way that overwhelms local contexts with global networks. Their art reminds us of life's irreducible materiality and humanity's inescapability of place. For them, art is more than just an object or process—it is a vehicle transforming human awareness through actions echoing religious ritual. By lingering over the extraordinary work of Beuys, Barney, Turrell, and Goldsworthy, Taylor not only creates a novel and personal encounter with their art but also opens a new understanding of overlooked spiritual dimensions in our era.

The Barthian Revolt in Modern Theology

The Barthian Revolt in Modern Theology PDF Author: Gary J. Dorrien
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664221515
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
In this history of the rise, development, and near-demise of Karl Barth's theology, Gary Dorrien carefully analyzes the making of the Barthian revolution and the reasons behind its simultaneously dominating and marginal character. He discusses Barth's relationship to his predecessors and contemporaries, as well as to modern theologians, and argues that his approach to theology was deeply indebted to his liberal past.

Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology

Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology PDF Author: Bruce L. McCormack
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198269560
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
`McCormack is master of this voluminous material. He is scrupulously at home in the intricate, dramatic background of Swiss socialist politics ...The result is a masterly study, often as compelling as its theme.' George Steiner, Times Literary Supplement `This meticulous and definitive study ... supersedes most previous interpretations.' Colin Gunton, Theological Book Review `it should quickly attain classic status. It is an exceptionally fine and erudite piece of work....The results of this painstaking attention to detail are truly ground-breaking. This is a major intellectual achievement, an interpretative act of great courage, and Barth studies will never look the same.' Graham Ward, Expository Times This book is a new, major intellectual biography of perhaps the most influential theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Barth. It offers the first full-scale revision of the well-known theologian Hans Urs Balthasar's seminal interpretation of Barth, which was first published in 1951. Drawing on a wealth of material, much of it unpublished during Barth's lifetime, as well as a thorough acquaintance with the best of recent German scholarship, Professor McCormack demonstrates that the fundamental decision which would control the whole of Barth's development - the turn to a new, critically realistic form of theological objectivism - was already made during the years in which Barth was at work on his first commentary on Romans. Professor McCormack further argues that the most significant subsequent decisions - both material and methodological - were made in Barth's Gottingen Dogmatics of 1924/5, and not later in the 1931 book on Anselm, as has often been alleged. Finally, he seeks to show that von Balthasar's description of a turn from dialectic to analogy, which provided the foundation for the neo-orthodox reading of Barth in the English-speaking world, fails to take seriously enough the extent to which dialectic remained a constitutive feature of Barth's outlook in the Church Dogmatics. This unique and important work provides not simply a fresh interpretation of Barth's development, but also a new paradigm for understanding the whole of Barth's theology.

Postliberal Theological Method

Postliberal Theological Method PDF Author: Adonis Vidu
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1597527653
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Postliberal Theological Method is a fresh, critical analysis of one of today's most influential theological movements. Drawing on recent thinking in analytic philosophy, particularly Donald Davidson's work on truth and meaning, Vidu raises questions about the linguistic turn in the theology of Hans Frei, George Lindbeck, John Milbank and others.

Towards the Day after Tomorrow

Towards the Day after Tomorrow PDF Author: P. H. Brazier
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532660219
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Humanity is moving ever towards its final destination without knowing why, when, where: teloi, multiple paths, leading towards God’s eschaton. These essays examine the movement towards this day of reckoning, and how such eschatological events are projected back into time. Towards the Day after Tomorrow, or the one after that, or months, decades—centuries—away, often we behave as though the end is upon us. These essays start with the beginning of the end: the incarnation. We examine the origins of Karl Barth’s realized eschatology in Expressionism. We consider death and judgment, as usurped by humanity, an eschaton without God’s forgiving judgment: multiple Holocausts. War ushers in the eschaton, but how do Christians handle conflict in the light of a redefined just war theory? We analyze the eschatological insights into humanity’s end in The Simpsons—post mortem. Consider the issue of atheistic human authorities usurping God’s judgment. Finally crisis and judgment are glimpsed in the mindset of people who suffer seizures—postlapsarian exile, the sufferance of salvation: how God blesses us despite the chaos of our human-generated teloi, in preparation for the end. As the end approaches, events become darker, chaotic, confusion reigns: “Judas immediately went out. And it was night.”

What Is Rhetorical Theology?

What Is Rhetorical Theology? PDF Author: Don H. Compier
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9781563382901
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
What Is Rhetorical Theology? covers the tradition of classical rhetoric, especially as practiced by the Roman orators. It considers the appropriation of this heritage in Augustine's On Christian Doctrine and the influence that important work had on Christian theology in the West. After describing how modern scholarship has tended to view rhetoric with deep suspicion, the book summarizes the retrieval of persuasive discourse in many academic disciplines and the influence of this movement on contemporary theologians such as David Tracy, David Cunningham, and Rebecca Chopp. In addition, What Is Rhetorical Theology? offers it own constructive proposal, that is, it argues that the theological task today may be described as rhetorical hermeneutics. With the help of literary critics such as Steven Mailloux and Jane Tompkins, the author develops a practical and "interested" approach to the interpretation of classical Christian texts, thereby allowing them to speak to our contemporary concerns. The book also presents an epistemological defense of the rhetorical approach to reading as a middle way between objectivism and relativism, a section that serves as a helpful introduction to current debates about postmodern thought. Finally, the book illustrates the rhetorical method by applying it to a doctrine of sin in the form of a constructive dialogue between critical theory and the Christian theological past. Don H. Compier is Associate Professor of Theology at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific and a member of the core doctoral faculty of the Graduate Theological Union.